Olivia Dean on personal growth and being her own boyfriend
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
OLIVIA DEAN once did a forward roll into a mosh pit whilst watching BOY BETTER KNOW at Reading Festival. She recounts the story with slight pride over our Zoom call, after being somewhat reluctant at first to share her funniest memories from festivals growing up. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter sifts through the appropriate stories to tell in her head, probably thinking none of them would make it into the article, let alone be the focus of the opening paragraph. “I’m not sure who I thought I was doing a rolly-polly into a mosh pit,” she says, sitting in her bedroom and promising that was the only time she ever went to Reading. Judging by the furry bucket hat hanging up behind her, festivals have long been a big part of Dean’s life, and have no doubt been sorely missed over the past year.
“I went to Secret Garden Party. It was ridiculously muddy, and I was [redacted] the whole time,” she explains, unknowingly disclosing too much information. “There was one morning we got up super early and found this arena. There were five people in there dancing in the mud, and they had a harness and a crane. I volunteered, because why not, and they took my shoes off, harnessed me up with this other geezer who happened to be there and made us box. That was sort of 11 in the morning on a Sunday. Everyone was just pissing themselves laughing, it was so funny.”
Although the pandemic, the reoccurring lockdowns and the cancellation en masse of all types of live music events have meant that Dean’s habit for festival athletics is a thing of the not-so-distant past, the musician reflects on the previous year with astute admiration. Having spent months by herself in her flat during lockdown, learning to knit, roller skate, and hone her yoga capabilities, she also found the period a perfect time for reflection. “I feel I’ve learnt to be really comfortable with myself and my own company. It really forced everyone to confront themselves and have a hard look at yourself and what you spend your time doing, what actually makes you happy, what makes you feel shit,” she says.
The pandemic and its effects have marked a turning point for Dean’s writing and creative outlook. Her song writing began at the age of 14 when she got her first guitar, the very first songs she wrote (The Silence and New Boy - available nowhere other than in Dean’s head) may be “cringe” in her eyes, but they also marked the start of the musician’s passion for channelling her emotions and feelings around relationships and turning them into music. “Strangely enough, I’m not a very open person,” she admits. “I don’t really talk about my feelings too much with people. That’s why I think I started song writing, because it was an avenue for me to process things.”
Since then, Dean’s hit songs The Hardest Part, Ok Love You Bye, and What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays- with almost 8 million combined streams on Spotify - have focussed entirely around the importance of someone else in her life, or rather, the aching gap they leave when they are gone. But now, after her period of introspection, Olivia Dean has flipped the script on her own narrative. And this newfound viewpoint has manifested itself in the form of Dean’s latest release; an amalgamation of positivity, empowerment, self-appreciation, and self-love, titled Be My Own Boyfriend.
“I’d gone through the whole period of feeling sad and I was trying to bring myself out of that,” she explains. “BEYONCÉ’S got this song called Me, Myself and I that really got me through because it literally was me, myself and I. This other artist called ALICE PHOEBE LOU and the feminism that seeps through her lyrics was really inspiring to me at the time.”
Be My Own Boyfriend is not just about learning to be at peace with being single and feeling, but that you are whole by yourself. It’s an attitude, a level-up that can be carried through relationships - a confidence and empowerment that reminds you of how you should always regard yourself: more than good enough and, maybe sometimes, a little bit better with someone else. With faint echoes of one of Dean’s biggest inspirations, Amy Winehouse, and commanding vocals laid over a sobering guitar riff, the first track released is a matter-of-fact reminder of individual strength. “You don’t always feel like loving yourself, sometimes you do get lonely,” she says. “But it’s interesting, I am in a relationship, but I can carry that through and be my own boyfriend. I don’t think it’s just relevant to being single.”
For Dean, music has often been a form of therapy. Song writing has been a natural and organic process for her since the start, writing as and when it feels right. “I think when I first started doing song writing seriously - whatever that means - I had this perception, and maybe it comes from having people in the industry tell me that I should be writing a song a day and just banging it out, and in all my spare time be thinking what people are going to like. But I actually think the best songs come when they come, and you can’t really control it. I find a lot of solace in that. I think it takes a lot of the weight off my shoulders.”
What Dean creates is free from industry pressures and the unneeded forceful encouragement to churn out potential TikTok hits and “hone your craft”. The musician makes music on her own terms and by her own means, often finding as many different women as possible to help develop her vision. But Dean acknowledges that most of the work is yet to be done in the industry in terms of representation, diversity and equality. “I find it kind of mind boggling because the population, even London specifically, is such a melting pot of people and all the artists that we listen to is a melting pot. So, I feel like that should be represented in everything that’s going on behind,” she says. “I’d also like to see more female producers because I haven’t worked with one single female producer for my whole time of being in the music industry. I know there are females producing, I just don’t think they have the opportunity or are being reached out to for jobs and stuff.”
Even though Dean finds inspiration in the powerful, trailblazing, industry-moulding musical icons, such as Beyoncé, her barometer for success is not just about changing the face of the industry or winning Grammy’s, it’s rooted in the deeply personal and human aspects of her music. Whilst Dean will no doubt view the changes that are coming to the industry as a success, they are - as they are for most people - more of an expectation. Instead, success for the musician is found in communicating with other people, empathising, understanding what connects us, and growing out of our darker times. Her discography is a display of how she is developing as a person, and how her attitudes change, and outlooks develop. Listening to Olivia Dean is to track the growth of a blossoming artist, find comfort in the things that make us human, and embrace our own company and individual capabilities as the most important part of our lives.
“I enjoy relating with other humans,” she concludes. “What I love about the music that inspired me growing up, like Amy’s music, I was just like, she’s a person and she’s going through some real shit as everyone is. At the end of the day, everyone’s pretty much going through the same stuff; they’re breaking up, they’re sometimes feeling sad and then kinda good. I just want to make people feel validated, because that’s what [Amy’s] music and the music I love does for me. So, even if I can just add a little piece to that music in the world, that would be good.”
Creative direction by JEFFREY THOMSON
Photography by MORGANN EVE RUSSELL
Styling by SIMONE BEYENE
Featuring OLIVIA DEAN
Hair by SHAMARA ROPER
Make-up by ALICE DODDS
Manicure by ELEANOR ROSE
On-site Covid Officer and photo assistance by GEORGE HUTTON
Interview and words by RY GAVIN
Olivia wears
LOOK 1 Shirt by WEEKDAY; String Vest, stylist’s own; Vest by ADAM JONES; Trousers by DICKIES; Earrings, model’s own.
LOOK 2 Top by ADAM JONES; Shorts by SOPHIE HIRD; Shoes by DR MARTENS; Earrings and Plastic Rings by CHORLEY WOULD; Gold Rings and Necklaces, model’s own; Beaded necklace, stylist’s own.
LOOK 3 Jacket, Trousers and Hat, all by KENZO; Plastic Ring by CHORLEY WOULD; Rings, stylist’s own.
LOOK 4 Top by H&M INNOVATION; Jacket and Jeans by PARNELL MOONEY; Kiss Necklace by CHORLEY WOULD; Earrings and Necklace, stylist’s own.
LOOK 5 Shirt and Corset by PARNELL MOONEY; Trousers by DICKIES; Shoes by CLARK’S; Necklace by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD; Earrings and Rings, stylist’s own.